Anthropic recently released its first initial public offering (IPO) prospectus, revealing its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and plans to invest up to $518 billion in building AI infrastructure over the next few years. If Anthropic goes public, analysts expect it to become a highly anticipated listing case among large generative AI companies, providing a reference for investors to assess the valuation of the AI industry.
According to Reuters, based on the prospectus, Anthropic’s target valuation could exceed $2 trillion, more than double its valuation of around $965 billion in May.
The prospectus shows that despite operational losses exceeding $8 billion last year for Anthropic (excluding major impairments related to previous fundraising), the net loss was $42 billion, but the annual revenue grew strongly by 12 times to reach $46 billion.
Around $34 billion of this was non-cash accounting expenses, reflecting the valuation increase of financing instruments that may be converted into Anthropic shares in the future, rather than cash directly paid for daily operations of the company. This accounting expense does not equate to the company’s annual operating cash outflow.
As of the end of December 2025, Anthropic held a total of $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.
The prospectus emphasizes that artificial intelligence “will fundamentally change the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity, and the internet.” To this end, the company spent $7.33 billion on computing power and infrastructure last year (accounting for over half of total operating expenses) and plans to invest $518 billion in building AI infrastructure such as cloud in the coming years.
However, in the risk disclosure section, the company points out that nearly a quarter of last year’s revenue came from just two customers, with most major clients not having signed long-term contracts, potentially leading to fluctuations in customer spending.
Anthropic’s IPO plan follows SpaceX’s listing on June 12 this year, with SpaceX’s valuation at around $1.77 trillion. Its stock rose by about 19% on the first day of trading, closing at around $161. Currently, its stock price is around $147, still higher than the IPO pricing of $135 per share.
AI and semiconductor stocks have recently seen a decline. Analysts believe that if Anthropic goes public at a high valuation, it could become a significant case for the market to evaluate growth expectations and capital expenditure of AI companies.
As this plan unfolds, Anthropic’s security research has assessed potential risks of its AI models in deception, disruption, and information manipulation. The risk report released by the company in February this year mentioned that researchers continue to evaluate risks concerning deception, disruption, and misalignment of objectives in the models, but the report also noted that there is currently not enough reason to issue specific warnings on the disruption risk of the models.
These reports have sparked widespread concern, with people expressing deep worries about risk management as tech companies rush to commercialize these increasingly powerful systems.
In response, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has urged the global AI community to slow down the pace of releasing new features.
However, facing market pressure brought by the launch of GPT-6Astra by major competitor OpenAI, Anthropic launched its new Opus 5.5 model last week, indicating the company’s need to maintain market momentum on the eve of the IPO. OpenAI secretly submitted IPO registration documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June; the company has not yet announced its listing time, with speculations suggesting it may go public in 2027.
Founded in 2021 by several former OpenAI researchers and management personnel, Anthropic introduced Claude in March 2023.
In the field of AI models and computing infrastructure, Anthropic faces competition from players such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and xAI.
Analysts believe that if Anthropic goes public, it could become an important reference for investors to evaluate the valuation and growth prospects of large generative AI companies; however, its final valuation, listing time, and market response will still depend on formal filing documents, issuance conditions, and investor demand.